Lets burn books. magazines, and the evil contraptions that churn them out.

Lets stop radio broadcasts.And TV. And telephone. And telegraph for good measure.

And lets declare pigeon breeders criminals and destroy those terrorist animals, just in case.

And ban fire, so smoke signals can't be used.

Lets cut peoples tongues. And their hands so they can't signal. And gauge their eyes out (and block their ears).

Because any means of communication could be at the disposal of terrorists.

Don't you want to be safe or what?

In older times intelligence agencies would follow suspects, build a file, keep track of them, build a case against them.

Now sometimes it seems to me like they want a contraption akin to Google to give them all what they need to do their job, sometimes one feels they don't want to get to work properly.

if the chaps manning drones have a 9 to 5 job, hey, why they shouldn't?

People should remember that Osama bin Laden's technology usage was minimal. Most likely meaningful communication happens face to face or via more conventional channels, only a complete moron would take the internet for anything secure now.

Anybody with a bit of technical acumen knew that the net isn't a safe communication medium and that it is easily infiltrated, by undermining the very fundamental of (very imperfect) secure communications the NSA and its UK counterpart have put a clear marker in place: don't use the internet.

Which is fine for actual terrorists, who already knew that, but is not fine for the rest of us, since now other kind of criminals very adept at exploiting the Internet have confirmation of how dumb the NSA is for undermining secure communications.

We as a society will be owned by a cracker in ways we haven't imagined yet, and the seed of that failure will be the NSA's cavalier attitude regarding people's privacy and appeal to security by obscurity (no matter how sophisticated the obscurity is) by undermining standards that should be as safe as practically possible.

I don't even remember the evil protocols they used, but when people familiar with TCP/IP started to become SysAdmins one of the first things they did was to install the drivers to allow TCP/IP networking.

He spent *years* in the wilderness after the first Apple Macs probed a financial disaster. He was removed by the board when it became obvious he was going to destroy his own company.

Then he presided over the train reck that was NexT.

He certainly had a vision, but golly, lets not canonize him.

He was heavily involved in all kinds of New Age stuff, he clearly was aware about how cults work and I can't imagine that somebody with such obvious marketing acumen would not realise the advantages of building a following that would do stupid things in order to ingratiate themselves with the "cult" leadership,

Every time I see a fanboi celebrating that he has been shafted at the tune of $500-$700 for buying something which could be sold online more efficiently I shake my head in disbelief.

How low is the self-esteem of these people to need *that* to achieve a boost of their happiness?

You have a business plan right there...

The only solid leads I got last time I was looking for a job and actually lead to interviews came all via Linkedin.

The traditional job boards were pretty useless.

You may not wish it so, but not having Linkedin is becoming a liability for people looking for a job.

It's funny how USian slashdotters say "competitive salaries" with such abandon.

Let's ignore for a moment that this visas mandate US level salaries, by definition if a company is forced to pay a higher than average salary it isn't "competitive".

The market for talent is a global one, you should be grateful companies decide to stay in the US, where they pay taxes, instead of moving operations elsewhere, as many have done.

Western salaries have been historically too high, a global economy will correct this, wether one likes it or not

Nonsense. Those visas mandate proper salaries (note that the article says nothing about this point)

This help came "after 18 months of losses" ( http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ )

And you can go and check Apple's share price, at just $3.3 on Xmas 97, it was well on its way to collapse, to claim that Apple didn't need the money (if anything at least as a moral buster) sounds frankly preposterous.

This help came "after 18 months of losses" ( http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ )

And you can go and check Apple's share price, at just $3.3 on Xmas 97, it was well on its way to collapse, to claim that Apple didn't need the money (if anything at least as a moral buster) sounds frankly preposterous.

.... that even the astroturfers are not trying to prop up this debacle.

Slashdot isn't the same without them.

It counts web browser visits.

I use mostly "apps" nowadays (Android devices) and rarely open my web browser, unless I am on my desktop.

Since we are speculating let me spin another theory: people using iPads to do web browsing continue to do so because they are a bit dumber than average (they are the people that queue, for days sometimes, to *buy* something that will be widely available a few days later) and haven't got the paradigm changes in personal computing (a web browser is beginning to be "old tech").

That is fine, but if my theory is correct, such numbers of iPads would only show that their owners are behind the technology trends, not that more devices are being bought.

... running a company and living up to those lofty ideals when faced with a balance sheet showing diminishing profits.

One of the biggest banks in the world has done this and they continue to make money (their share price is going back to pre-2008 levels).

All this anti outsource nonsense is hysteria which finds its natural home in the complaints of the people most affected by the changes.

We have seen a reduction of living standards of people in most Western countries (bar Germany perhaps, who bring lots of foreign IT workers to the country *hint*) because simply put it is completely unsustainable that in a global economy Western technicians have a lavish lifestyle sustained by debt while their counterparts elsewhere have paltry incomes in spite of them saving more money instead of incurring in sparling out of control personal debt.

Sorry folks, but your "American Dream" nonsense of buy today and pay it later was completely unsustainable, specially when other countries are churning out thousands of technicians and Engineers perfectly capable of providing technical support (all this bullshit about they not being qualified is patent nonsense: if your companies can't find the talented people it is because they are not looking very hard).

Unbridled consumerism is the fat that needs to be trimmed from the Western worker, unless you are hopping that your counterparts elsewhere follow the same path, which may happen, but would be unsustainable, so something has got to give: either most new jobs go elsewhere (India, China, Singapore, Philippines, Mexico, you name it) or your standards of living are diminished (which in hindsight isn't a bad thing: you don't need to overeat so much, so many gadgets, or such inefficient cars).